Authors: Anne Holt
‘She’s our child,’ said Isak at the other end. ‘And she isn’t—’
‘It’s all right, Ragnhild. Mummy was just a little bit worried. Hang on a minute and I’ll be there.’
The child was inconsolable. She howled and threw the dice on the floor.
‘I don’t want to be lost, Mummy!’
‘Try that teddy bear shop,’ Johanne hissed down the phone. ‘The one where you can make your own bear. It’s at the end of the walkway leading from the old part of the centre to the new part.
‘Mummy, Mummy!
Who’s lost me?
’
‘Hush, sweetheart. Mummy will be there in a minute. Nobody has lost you, you know that.
I’m coming!
’
The last comment was snapped furiously down the phone: ‘Keep your mobile on. I can be there in twenty minutes. Call me straight away if anything happens.’
Johanne ended the call, shoved the phone in her back pocket, ran into the living room, scooped up her youngest daughter and comforted her as best she could, while racing through the apartment towards the stairs leading to the outside door.
‘Nobody’s going to lose you, you know that. There’s nothing to be upset about. Mummy’s here now.’
‘Why did you say somebody had lost me?’
Ragnhild was snuffling, but at least she had calmed down slightly.
‘You misunderstood, sweetheart. That kind of thing happens.’
She slowed down as she reached the staircase, and walked calmly.
‘We’re going for a little drive. To Sandvika Storsenter.’
‘Storvik Sandsenter,’ said Ragnhild, smiling through her tears.
‘That’s right.’
‘What are you going to buy me?’
‘I’m not going to buy you anything, sweetheart. We’re just going to … we’re just going to pick up Kristiane.’
‘Kristiane’s coming back tomorrow,’ the child protested. ‘Tonight you and me are going to watch a film with popcorn on the sofa, on our own.’
‘Put your boots on. Quickly, please.’
Her heart was fluttering. She gasped for breath and pulled on her jacket as she forced herself to smile.
‘We’ll take your jacket with us. Off we go.’
‘I want my hat! And gloves! It’s cold outside, Mummy!’
‘Right, there you go,’ said Johanne, grabbing something that was lying on the shelf. ‘You can put them on in the car.’
Without even locking the outside door she grabbed her daughter’s hand and ran down the steps and across the gravel to the car, which fortunately was parked just in front of the building.
‘You’re hurting me,’ Ragnhild protested. ‘Mummy, you’re squeezing my hand too hard!’
Johanne felt dizzy. She recognized the fear from the very first time she held Kristiane in her arms. Perfect, said the midwife. Healthy and beautiful, said Isak. But Johanne knew better. She looked down at her daughter, just thirty minutes old, so silent and with something in her that was blowing her to pieces.
‘Jump in,’ she said just a little too sharply, opening the back door. ‘I’ll fasten your belt.’
Her mobile rang. At first she couldn’t remember where she had put it, and started patting her jacket pockets.
‘Your bottom’s ringing,’ said Ragnhild, clambering into the car.
‘Yes, yes,’ Johanne said breathlessly into her phone when she had managed to get it out of her back pocket.
‘I’ve found her,’ Isak said from a long way off. ‘She was in the teddy bear shop, just as you thought, and she’s absolutely fine. A man was looking after her, and they were actually standing chatting to each other when I got there.’
Johanne leaned against the car, trying to slow her breathing. An immense feeling of relief that Kristiane was safe was overshadowed all too quickly by what Isak had said.
‘What man?’
‘What man? I ring up to tell you that Kristiane is perfectly safe, just as I thought, and you start going on about—’
‘Are you aware that shopping centres are an absolute El Dorado for paedophiles?’
Her words turned to grey clouds of vapour in the ice-cold air.
‘Mummy, aren’t you going to fasten my belt?’
‘Just a minute, sweetheart. What kind of—?’
‘No, Johanne, that’s enough! I’m not having this!’
Isak Aanonsen rarely became angry.
Even when Johanne got up from the sofa late one night an eternity ago and explained that she didn’t think their marriage could be saved, and that she’d already obtained the necessary forms to draw a line under it, Isak had tried to be positive. He just sat there for a while, alone in the living room, as Johanne went to bed in tears. An hour later he had knocked on the bedroom door, having already accepted the fact that they were no longer each other’s most intimate confidant. Kristiane was the most important person in all this, he said. Kristiane would always be the most important thing for both of them, and he really wanted them to agree on the practical arrangements regarding their daughter before they tried to sleep. By the time dawn broke they had come to an agreement. Since then he had loyally adhered to it. And she could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times over the years he had shown even the slightest hint of irritation.
But now he was furious.
‘This is just hysteria! The man who was talking to Kristiane was a perfectly ordinary guy who had obviously noticed what kind of … what kind of child she is. He was very kind, and Kristiane smiled and waved to him as we left. She’s standing here now and …’
Johanne could hear Kristiane’s usual dam-di-rum-ram in the background. She started to cry. Silently, so that she wouldn’t upset Ragnhild any more than she already had.
‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered into the phone. ‘I’m sorry, Isak. I mean it. I was just really, really scared.’
‘I think we both were,’ he said after a moment’s hesitation, his voice back to normal. ‘But everything’s worked out fine. I assume you’d prefer it if I brought her straight home today? What do you think?’
‘Thank you. Thank you so much, Isak. It would be wonderful to have her back home.’
‘I’ll make up my time with her another weekend or something.’
‘Perhaps you could stay as well,’ Johanne heard herself saying.
‘Stay over with you? Great!’
In her mind’s eye she could see a glint in those dark blue eyes that narrowed to slits in his always unshaven face when he smiled that crooked, sweet smile that she had once been so in love with.
‘I’ll be there in half an hour,’ he said. ‘Do you want me to pick up any shopping while we’re here?’
‘No thanks. Just bring yourselves. Just come.’
She ended the call, overwhelmed by an immense weariness. She rested her arms on the roof of the car. The metal was so cold that her skin contracted. Perhaps she could tell Isak about the man in the garden on Christmas Day. If she explained that her fear hadn’t come from nowhere, that she had a good reason to be anxious, that the man had known Kristiane’s name although neither of the children knew him, if she …
No.
Slowly she straightened up and dried her tears with the back of her hand.
‘Out you come,’ she said, bending down to Ragnhild with a smile. ‘We’re not going to Sandvika after all. Isak and Kristiane are coming here instead.’
‘But we were going to watch a film and pretend we were at the cinema!’ Ragnhild complained loudly. ‘Just you and me!’
‘Well, we can do that with the others. It’ll be brilliant. Come on, out you get.’
Raghnild slid reluctantly from her child seat and climbed out of the car. As they walked back across the gravel, she suddenly stopped and put her hands on her hips.
‘Mummy,’ she said severely. ‘First of all we were in a big hurry to get to Storvika Sandsenter. Now we’re going back inside. We were going to pretend we were at the cinema, just you and me, and now suddenly Isak and Kristiane are coming. Daddy’s quite right.’
‘About what?’ said Johanne with a smile, stroking her youngest daughter’s hair.
‘Sometimes you just can’t make up your mind. But you’re still the best mummy in the world. The very best supermummy in the whole wide world, with bells on.’
*
Detective Inspector Silje Sørensen of the violent crime division in Oslo had drunk two cups of hot chocolate with whipped cream and was feeling sick.
The photographs in front of her didn’t help.
This year Christmas Eve had fallen on a weekday, which was perfect for those who wanted to have the longest possible time off work. The twenty-third of December, when some people also held celebrations, was on a Tuesday, so most people had also taken the Monday off, even though it was a normal working day, and stayed away on Tuesday. Christmas Day and Boxing Day were bank holidays anyway, and today, the day after Boxing Day, it was Saturday, and therefore a working day for those within the public sector, but for the less conscientious Christmas 2008 was an opportunity to take two weeks off work, since there was no point in going in when New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day fell in the middle of the following week.
Norway was working at a quarter speed, but not Silje Sørensen.
The sight of her full in-tray had put her in a foul mood. In the end it was easy to convince the family it would be best for all of them if she put in an extra day at work.
Or perhaps it was the thought of Hawre Ghani that distracted her, whatever she tried to do.
She flicked quickly through the photographs of the body, took out the picture of the boy when he was alive, plus a new document, and closed the file.
On the afternoon of Christmas Day she had phoned DCI Harald Bull, as he had requested. He wasn’t all that interested in discussing work in the middle of the holiday. When he wrote ‘as soon as possible’, he meant 5 January. Despite the fact that the overtime budget had been blown long ago, they agreed to give DC Knut Bork the job of checking the Kurdish asylum seeker’s background. Bork was young, single and ambitious, and Silje Sørensen was impressed by the report he had completed that morning and left in her office.
She glanced through the pages.
Hawre Ghani had come to Norway eighteen months ago, allegedly at the age of fifteen. No parents. Since he had no ID papers, the Norwegian authorities quickly became suspicious of his age.
Despite doubts about the boy’s date of birth, he was placed in an
asylum centre in Ringebu. There were several others like him in the centre, asylum seekers who were alone and under the age of eighteen. He ran away after three days. Since then he had been more or less permanently on the run, apart from a few days in custody every time the street-smart youngster wasn’t quite smart enough.
A year ago he turned to prostitution.
According to the report he sold himself at a high price, often to just about anybody. On at least one occasion Hawre Ghani had robbed a punter, something which had been discovered by chance. He had stolen a pair of Nike Shocks from Sportshuset in Storo. A security guard had overpowered him, got him down on the floor and sat on him until the police arrived three quarters of an hour later. When he was searched they found a beige Mont Blanc wallet containing credit cards, papers and receipts bearing the name of a well-known male sports journalist. He wasn’t interested in pressing charges, DC Bork’s report stated matter-of-factly, but several colleagues who had some knowledge of prostitution were able to confirm that both the boy and the robbery victim were known to them.
On one occasion an attempt had been made to link Hawre up with a Kurd from northern Iraq who had a temporary residence permit, but without any right to bring in his family. The man, who had been allowed to stay on in Norway for more than ten years and spoke fluent Norwegian, had been working part-time as a youth leader in Gamlebyn. So far his projects working with difficult refugee children had been very successful. Things didn’t go so well with Hawre. After three weeks the boy had persuaded four mates from the club to help him break into some basement offices; they also tried to empty an ATM with a crowbar, and stole and smashed up a four-year-old Audi TT.
Silje Sørensen stared at the picture of the immature young man with the big nose. His lips looked as if they belonged to a ten-year-old. His skin was smooth.
Perhaps she was naive.
Of course she was naive, even after all these years in the force, where her illusions burst like bubbles as she rose through the ranks.
But this boy
was
young. Of course it was impossible to say whether he was fifteen or seventeen, but the photograph had been taken after
his arrival in Norway, and she could swear that at that point it would be quite some time before he came of age.
However, that didn’t matter now.
Slowly she put the photograph down right on the edge of the desk. It would stay there until she had solved this case. If it was true that someone had taken Hawre Ghani’s life – as the information gathered so far indicated – then she was going to find out who that person was.
Hawre Ghani was dead, and nobody had bothered about him while he was alive.
But at least someone was going to bother about his death.
*
‘Don’t bother about me,’ said Adam Stubo, waving the man away. ‘I’ve already had three cups of coffee today, and any more would do me no good at all.’
Lukas Lysgaard shrugged his shoulders and sat down on one of the yellow wing chairs. His father’s. Adam still thought it best not to sit on Eva Karin’s, and pulled out the same dining chair as before.
‘Have you got any further?’ asked Lukas, his voice suggesting a lack of interest.
‘How’s the headache?’ said Adam.
The young man shrugged his shoulders again, then scratched his hair and screwed up his eyes.
‘Better now. It comes and goes.’
‘That’s the way it is with migraine, or so I’ve heard.’
A grandfather clock slowly struck twice. Adam withstood the temptation to check the time against his own watch; he was sure it was after two. He felt a slight draught on the back of his neck, as if a window was open. There was a smell of bacon, and something else he couldn’t identify.
‘Not much new information to report, I’m afraid.’
He leaned forward on his chair and rested his elbows on his knees.
‘Quite a lot of material has been sent away for more detailed analysis. It seems highly likely that we will find biological traces at the scene of the crime. Since it was the police who actually found her, and very soon after the murder took place as far as we can tell, we hope we’ve secured the evidence to the best of our ability.’